Download PDF Here 13th Anniversary
Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume One December 2022.
Invitation to my sister, poem by Geraldine Mills.
Invitation to my sister
after Elizabeth Bishop
Within this night of gales and broken stars,
your silence rises from the dark to sit with me.
Six years gone, it’s time you told me where you went.
Please come back, tell me all.
Please come back singing.
Come in your little gold car,
the one that whizzed you through
the curling roads of Erris,
your one good eye seeing you safely to your door.
Bring your Mayo accent with you.
Make sure you come back singing.
Wear your shocking pink-loud dress, the one
you bought on Fordham Road
when first New York cajoled you in,
thinking roses, roses all your life,
not briars scratching out your future path.
Come back singing
the lark in the clear air
the song you lulled sleep
into the child of me.
We’ll walk to the place of bees,
watch the rainbow wearing its top hat.
Come like the fieldfares to our garden in October
with the scent of winter on their wings.
Come with the guelder berries blazing,
alder leaves tumbling down,
and we’ll drink tea till the cows come home.
So, why don’t you come back now.
Why don’t you come back singing.
© Geraldine Mills
Geraldine Mills is the author of five collections of poetry, three of short stories and two children’s novels. She is the recipient of many awards including the Hennessy New Irish Writer Award, three Arts Council Bursaries and a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship. Her New and Selected Poetry Collection, which was awarded an Arts Council Agility Award in 2021, is forthcoming from Arlen House.